My uniform is sweatpants, so crusted over with dried paint that they're as hard as a table. I wear T-shirts that are also covered in paint, and Crocs.

Everyone accepts the abstraction of Bach. My work aspires to the same kind of abstraction, which is so engaging that you're distracted from asking about what it means. So many paintings have hidden meanings or need wall texts, but my work is not in that category. Once it's in the viewer's eyes my job will be judged on whether or not it is engaging and pulls you in to a kind of intelligence or poetic something going on there that makes it sustainable to look at.

The world of painting has nothing to do with the art world.

I try not to bring in anything I don't love looking at. It's about restaint ... There is something about an unfinished quality that leaves within you that sense of possibility.

All my siblings became artists. One's a novelist, my brother is a painter, my sister was a costume designer.

If you come every day or every month to my studio, you won't see that much change, but if you come once a year, you'll see big new categories opened up.

So many paintings have hidden meanings or need wall texts, but my work is not in that category.